TY - JOUR
T1 - A hemispheric two-channel code accounts for binaural unmasking in humans
AU - Encke, Jörg
AU - Dietz, Mathias
N1 - Copyright the Author(s) 2022. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.
PY - 2022/10/22
Y1 - 2022/10/22
N2 - Sound in noise is better detected or understood if target and masking sources originate from different locations. Mammalian physiology suggests that the neurocomputational process that underlies this binaural unmasking is based on two hemispheric channels that encode interaural differences in their relative neuronal activity. Here, we introduce a mathematical formulation of the two-channel model – the complex-valued correlation coefficient. We show that this formulation quantifies the amount of temporal fluctuations in interaural differences, which we suggest underlie binaural unmasking. We applied this model to an extensive library of psychoacoustic experiments, accounting for 98% of the variance across eight studies. Combining physiological plausibility with its success in explaining behavioral data, the proposed mechanism is a significant step towards a unified understanding of binaural unmasking and the encoding of interaural differences in general.
AB - Sound in noise is better detected or understood if target and masking sources originate from different locations. Mammalian physiology suggests that the neurocomputational process that underlies this binaural unmasking is based on two hemispheric channels that encode interaural differences in their relative neuronal activity. Here, we introduce a mathematical formulation of the two-channel model – the complex-valued correlation coefficient. We show that this formulation quantifies the amount of temporal fluctuations in interaural differences, which we suggest underlie binaural unmasking. We applied this model to an extensive library of psychoacoustic experiments, accounting for 98% of the variance across eight studies. Combining physiological plausibility with its success in explaining behavioral data, the proposed mechanism is a significant step towards a unified understanding of binaural unmasking and the encoding of interaural differences in general.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85140352638&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s42003-022-04098-x
DO - 10.1038/s42003-022-04098-x
M3 - Article
C2 - 36273085
SN - 2399-3642
VL - 5
SP - 1
EP - 10
JO - Communications Biology
JF - Communications Biology
IS - 1
M1 - 1122
ER -